Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/File:Tree of life SVG.svg

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Phylogenetic tree of life[edit]

Original - A phylogenetic tree of life, showing the relationship between species whose genomes have been mapped. The very center represents the last universal ancestor of all life on earth. The different colors represent the three domains of life: pink represents eukaryota (animals and plants); blue represents bacteria; and green represents archaea, with dark and light distinguishing one phylum from the next. Note the presence of homo sapiens (humans) second from the rightmost edge of the pink segment.
Reason
Super high resolution, extremely informative, beautifully intricate even if you don't know what it means.
Articles this image appears in
Tree of life (science), phylogenetic tree, cladistics, last universal ancestor, The Ancestor's Tale
Creator
Iletunic (retouched by LadyofHats)
  • Support as nominator --DS (talk) 21:14, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Beautiful Bastique demandez 00:08, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Great image. Synergy 00:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Could we add something to define what the colors (both different hues and lightnesses) mean? If it's there, it's not obvious enough and I saw no mention in the caption. Also, is there a method to the species chosen to be represented here? And why choose specific species when there's millions of them and not larger groups of organisms, such as families or orders? Granted I am no expert in biology or biological systems... ~ ωαdεstεr16♣TC♣ 03:38, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think these are the species for whom the total genome has been mapped. DS (talk) 04:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Taxonomic levels, like family, are sort of falling out of favor now, and are ill-defined for microoganisms anyway. Dragonfly is right, this looks like a tree of fully sequenced species, for which we are no where near completion. de Bivort 21:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't know what the different color lightness means. Dark pink is different from light pink how? Same goes for blue and green. As for the three domains themselves, it would be much more helpful if they were labeled on the image itself. I also rewrote the caption to read better and be a bit more concise and clear. Also has been wikified substantially.~ ωαdεstεr16«talkstalk» 16:08, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ah! I've read through ITOL again -- and if you're concerned about copyright, notice that ITOL is run by Ivica Letunic, and that the original image was uploaded and released into PD by Iletunic -- and it seems that dark and light are just used to distinguish one phylum from the next. There are seven phyla shown in the eukaryotic segment, nineteen in the bacterial, and three in the archaean. DS (talk) 19:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Common names would be much more informative for the average reader. Noodle snacks (talk) 05:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of these species don't have common names. From the rightmost edge of the pink segment: chimpanzee, human, rat, mouse, chicken, zebrafish, pufferfish, anopheles mosquito, fruit fly, nematode, another kind of nematode, yeast, another kind of yeast, another kind of yeast, slime mold, thale cress, rice, algae, malaria parasite, cryptosporidium parasite, another kind of algae, leishmaniasis parasite, giardia parasite... beyond that, all they have are Linnaean names. E. Coli is in there, so is the Black Plague and Salmonella and Cholera and the bacterium that causes ulcers and the bacterium that causes strep and various multi-drug-resistant bugs... DS (talk) 12:43, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, but noting those that do would actually make the image usable for someone who doesn't know the Latin Binomial for any of those species. Noodle snacks (talk) 04:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose At thumbnail, it hardly shows anything. So, little EV for articles IMO --Muhammad(talk) 09:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • FPs get evaluated at full resolution. de Bivort 21:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • But EV relates to article usage, so if it's of limited use with how it appears in articles, then EV could be low. --jjron (talk) 01:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The labels on the border (e.g. Firmicutes) would be useful to include. Narayanese (talk) 20:47, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. de Bivort 21:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 03:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per my reason above. Noodle snacks (talk) 04:35, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. great graphic. —Pengo 07:50, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm really torn on this one, I'm pretty sure it's a great picture but seeing as I can't seem to open .svg in any program I have I can't see it at full scale. Even on the image page it's too small to read the text, and I think I won't be the only one who doesn't download image files from wikipedia in order to look at them. But then I do know that .svg is the preferred format for diagrams, so I can't oppose on those grounds. Would also think that some indication of common names would be good, although it would probably spoil the layout entirely. I'll think about it and try to make a decision (and maybe find out how to open .svg files). Terri G (talk) 16:28, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Really? My copy of Firefox handles .svg just fine. In the meantime, you might want to look at [[File:ITOL_Tree_of_life.jpg]]. DS (talk) 18:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most image editors are capable of rasterizing SVGs (I know you can open them in GIMP, for example). If you want to edit them, use Inkscape. MER-C 10:38, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately we don't have anything much better than the usual Paint and so on you'd usually find on a work computer and no permission to add anything else, so I suspect I'll have to live without seeing it in all it's glory. Terri G (talk) 18:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This graphic is seriously nifty! Sophus Bie (talk) 02:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose attractive in its way but not typical and or really that informative. A phylogenetic tree should be something that people can gain information from, and in my opinion the way the text circles round makes that unnecessarily difficult in this example. The Latin names and to a lesser extent svg format make it less accessible than would be ideal for featured content. In addition this similar image seems to be used in a lot more articles, could it replace the instances where this image is used in the future? Guest9999 (talk) 21:04, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Yes, it should have English common names for use on en:wp, and it should be more accessible at thumbnail size. Quoting from the image description: "pink represents eukaryota (animals and plants); blue represents bacteria; and green represents archaea." This information should be in the image, and visible and readable at thumbnail size. Like other commenters above, I find the light and dark shades confusing, especially since they could have been on the tree itself to make it easier to visually disentangle the branches. Finally, nothing has been said about which metric was used for computing branch lengths. Samsara (FA  FP) 23:01, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 04:28, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Informative and visually appealing. –Juliancolton Talk · Review 20:19, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. A striking image which illustrates the subject well. Mostlyharmless (talk) 00:46, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question: How is it decided which organisms are put on the image? I've looked up some, and some (but not too many) don't have Wikipedia articles (example: Pyrococcus horikashii). SpencerT♦Nominate! 20:19, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • See the comment by DS above, basically for species where the genome has been mapped. Noodle snacks (talk) 23:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • INFO hello everyone, sorry that i couldnt see this before becouse i was out of the country for quite some weeks. i would like to explain some things about this image. in reality i DIDNT do it myself, this image, as far as i understood it, was generated by a program, and i was only asked to retrace it as vector. so i didnt chose the colors, nor the names, nor the format. actually i didnt made any changes to the original image, and i wouldnt wish to change it without the agreement of Ivica Letunic, since he is the actual author of it. -LadyofHats (talk) 07:08, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Per high quality, unique image. MBisanz talk 23:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A number of issues bring me to not promote this. 73% support is just shy of 75%, but the EV of the image in thumbnail is indeed questionable; the lack of common names keeps from potential informational value; each color should be labeled on the image itself, and I'm still unsure what the different shades mean. Not promoted ~ ωαdεstεr16«talkstalk» 00:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]